Infamous: (A Bad Boy Romantic Suspense)

by Noir, Mila

  Well, except for the two romantic directions. They were both appealing, equally so, which was the problem. Different men, almost opposites, who couldn’t stand each other. Only thing they had in common was, for some reason, liking me. And I worried about that sometimes, that they both liked me mostly because the other one did and it was a strange competition between them. I wasn’t very comfortable with that.

  Books and movies and TV make it seem like it’s really hot to be torn between two men. Usually a “bad” one and a “good” one. In my case they were both kind of good and bad, and since they were both vampires, equally dangerous. And yes, okay, elements of it were hot. I won’t lie. But it was also complicated and nerve-wracking.

  Mostly because I’d started to realize that I was in love with both of them.

  I know what you’re thinking. Emma, are you stupid? Of course you’re in love with both of them. Who wouldn’t be? Stop whining and enjoy it.

  But I’m just not built that way. And it’s difficult to enjoy anything when you know that the second you touch down on land again, a whole lot of people are going to want a piece of you.

  It’d be one thing if we all got to just drift on this boat, squabbling, making love, squabbling some more. And then more sex. I could deal with that. Eventually we’d get to some kind of place where we could all live with it. But not with all this stuff hanging over us. Not with the threat of who knows how many other vampires coming for me at any second, ready to do whatever it took to get me to be on their “side” and start the mother of all undead wars in earnest.

  It’s no wonder I was having a hard time sleeping.

  ***

  In the end, we decided to head to neither France nor Greece, but rather back to jolly old England. We’d have to fly, which I was nervous about, but it did seem like the best idea. And at least this time I probably wouldn’t get pickpocketed in the London Underground.

  The flight was a flight. We used a private jet. I was kind of getting used to this luxury lifestyle, kind of not. I wasn’t about to turn it down, though. No one who has the opportunity not to fly coach would turn it down, unless they were insane. Having done the poor former student version of traveling, I wasn’t going to ever argue about yachts, private jets, or anything that made it less cramped.

  I hadn’t seen Solosha since my rescue and was a little concerned. No one had mentioned her or what she was up to during all this. In fact, I was curious what the other supernaturals in general thought about this vampire feuding. Their lives all seemed intertwined in some way so it must impact them. If the vampires had an all-out war, would werewolves and changelings be expected to pick sides? Did they have their own internal issues they were dealing with, separate from the vamps? How did their cultures coexist? So many questions I didn’t really have the energy to ask.

  And then there was humanity, who I was sort of forced to represent in all of this. Most of us didn’t know anything about this other world and it was probably for the best. The last time we had, it had involved fire, pitchforks, and a whole lot of innocent people getting killed. I didn’t really trust us as a group to deal with it well. And while it did make sense for us to be suspicious of vampires and probably weres, changelings like Tina could get caught in the crossfire and they weren’t any kind of threat to us at all. We outnumbered the supernaturals by a lot and human beings tend to be pretty ruthless when it comes to anything we think threatens our status as top species.

  The whole thing was a heavy responsibility I didn’t really want. But here I was and you don’t always get to choose the role you play. You just have to say your lines and do the best you can.

  I watched Robert and Dimitri on the flight; they sat apart from me, deep in discussion. I sat with Tina and tried not to think about what lay ahead. It wasn’t easy.

  “It’s going to be okay,” Tina said, handing me a glass of wine. I sipped it and put it down. I don’t understand the appeal of fermented grapes but at least they made me feel a little warmer. Plane air makes me feel like I’m freezing all the way down to my bones.

  “Is it? I don’t know. It’s not like I can ever go back to my old life, knowing what I know. I don’t think I’ll ever be free of this,” I said, looking out the window.

  “Okay, but, Emma. Seriously. Was your old life all that great?” Tina asked quietly. I looked at her, ready to argue. But then I sighed.

  “No, not really. It wasn’t bad, either. It just wasn’t…anything. It was a life in only the most basic sense. I did the things you’re “supposed” to do. Nothing remarkable,” I admitted.

  “There’s nothing wrong with that,” she said.

  “No, but what’s right with it? Who says, on their death bed, ‘Man, I’m really glad I risked nothing and did everything I was supposed to’?” I asked.

  “My family has had this little quirk for about eight hundred years now,” Tina said, eating some slices of what looked like candied peaches. “For a lot of it we had to hide because we couldn’t control our shifting and people thought we were abominations. I have ancestors who were burned at the stake, hung, put on trial for witchcraft and banished from their homes. No one has it easy,” she said.

  I realized that, among my many other flaws, I’d been thinking only about myself in this whole debacle. There were a lot of other players involved, people I had come to think of as friends. And lovers. I had to stop being selfish.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, looking at Tina. She smiled.

  “You don’t have anything to be sorry for. I was born into this life. I’ve known about all the weird things out there, have been one of them, a long time. You’re doing really well.”

  “I guess, but I’d like to do better,” I said. It was getting harder and harder to find any kind of balance. I didn’t want anyone else to get hurt, but I didn’t want to be, either. The last time I’d tried to make things easier had been a spectacular disaster, however. Clearly running away was going to solve exactly jack and shit.

  At this point it was about figuring out what I could do to feel less helpless. It was nice to have people who wanted to protect me, but that wasn’t a realistic long-term goal. Who knew how long this feud would continue? Given how long it had been going on already, my money was on forever.

  The fact was, I was human. So it wasn’t like I could take some anti-supernatural martial arts class and become Buffy. I had no special gifts or strength; I was vulnerable all the time.

  There was only one solution. And I knew it. But I just wasn’t ready to go there. Yet.

  “Let me tell you a little story,” Tina started, settling down next to me with a cup of coffee that I suspected contained about ten or more spoonfuls of sugar and cream. It also smelled very strongly of vanilla.

  “Once upon a time there was a little changeling girl, so little, in fact, that you might call her the ‘runt’ of her litter. Her family certainly did. Now, that little changeling girl really struggled with her abilities. She wanted to be normal like the human children she saw out of her family’s windows. She wasn’t allowed out because her body was covered in blue scales and, no matter how hard she tried, she just couldn’t make them look like regular skin.

  “Now, this little changeling girl was smart. Really smart. Smarter than everyone else in her family combined. And they didn’t like her very much because of it. Her siblings ignored her and her parents avoided her because she just didn’t fit the mold she was supposed to. Changelings usually master their shifts before their first birthday, they’re obedient and subservient, and their families are their entire lives. They rarely travel and the females usually just make more changelings.

  “But our little story girl wanted more. She wanted a bigger life full of adventure and excitement. She wanted lovers and not children, and she wanted basically everything she wasn’t supposed to.

  “When she became a teenager she got pretty rebellious. She went out at night even though she’d been forbidden to go out at all because she still couldn’t maintain her shifts for
long. She met a lot of other changelings with similar views to her own. They taught her how to shift into other shapes and forms and how to maintain them longer, and she grew more confident and sure of herself.

  “She even met another changeling girl she fell in deep like with, then love. She had friends, dreams, plans. And everything was kept a careful secret from the rest of the changelings they knew. Things seemed to be going pretty well.

  “Until one night, when she’d planned on going to a secret meeting of the other rebellious changelings. She got held up by her family, and when she finally got to the clearing they were supposed to be in, everything had been burned. Including her lover. It had been made to look like an accident but she knew it wasn’t.

  “When she got back to her home, it had been warded against her. Her family shunned her, except for her mother, who gave her what spare money she had but could do no more without risking expulsion from the community herself.

  “And so our changeling girl was thrust out into the world, young and scared, with only the clothes on her back. The next few years were dark and desperate. Sometimes she scraped by, sometimes she starved. She did things she never expected to. She met strange people, some kind, some not. She discovered the world was beautiful and cruel. She survived.

  “One night, during a particularly rough patch, she picked a pocket that would change her life. It was the pocket of a tall, severely handsome vampire who somehow saw potential in the scrawny, dirty scrap of a changeling with her hand in his pants. He cleaned her up, gave her work, and expected her to be loyal, intelligent, and trustworthy. And she was.

  “When she met other vampires, she realized hers was special. He didn’t simply feed to eat, he didn’t prey on the helpless, and he wanted something better for his kind and others. Most of the ones she met were petty and trivial, more interested in their clothes and pale complexions than taking any responsibility for the immortal gift they’d been given.

  “She met one other vampire who, though radically different than hers in personality and looks, had, deep down, the same heart and drive. He might sleep his way across the continents but he wasn’t as vapid as he seemed. He cared, even if he didn’t show it.

  “Now, our changeling girl became quite good at her job and involved in all kinds of supernatural politics. The world outside her particular little changeling community was vast and complicated and filled with plenty of other beings just trying to get by.

  “Of course, she also met a lot of humans. They were strange, perplexing creatures who seemed bent on destroying themselves and the world they lived in for no discernible reason. They seemed to continuously be at war, hating each other, or coming up with truly horrifying ways to torture, maim, and kill for minor differences of skin or religion or class. No one ever seemed to get along for long and human history seemed destined to be a never-ending cycle of sadness and ruin.

  “But it wasn’t always like that. Our changeling girl also saw kindness and love, forgiveness and sacrifice, and she learned that everyone, whatever species, was just trying to make their life worth something, one way or another.

  “In the end, all we can do is what we think is right and help those we care about as much as we can. We can’t control everything, and the world, like it or not, will go on spinning without us just the same. So we just have to do what we can with the time we have,” she finished, then kissed me on the cheek and went over to one of the napping pods the plane provided. She seemed to go to sleep instantly.

  I watched her for a while, seeing how, in sleep, her shifting lapsed and her skin took on the blue scale quality of her story. It was beautiful, iridescent and opal-y, and it made me sad we didn’t live in a world where she could just be herself without having to hide.

  But we all wear facades of some kind or other, hiding who we really are because to be ourselves is too vulnerable, painful, and open. We hide because we tell ourselves it’s safer, which it many ways it is. But it’s also lonelier. If we never open up and risk anything, we never know what we’re capable of.

  I know I certainly didn’t. I’d spent my life actively avoiding finding out what I was capable of, keeping to the safe sidelines, hiding in plain sight. It had made me distant and a bit cold, I think, living a life I told myself I wanted when in reality I had no idea what I wanted at all.

  I looked at Dimitri and Robert, these most opposite of men, and realized that for the first time in my life I did know something I wanted: them. Both of them. I wasn’t sure what that meant or how it would work, but I knew it was what I wanted. To be with them and help them and be a part of whatever it was they did for as long as I could.

  But did they want me? For now, certainly. They wouldn’t be going to all this trouble if they didn’t. But how long would that last? Eventually they’d get tired of me, probably when I started to really age, and what would become of me then? I didn’t relish the idea of becoming some cracked old coot in a home, babbling to the uncaring walls about the old days when she ran with vampires.

  But I was getting ahead of myself. Now, today, I was in my twenties and we were all on the run. Thinking too far ahead wasn’t going to solve anything or guarantee a less maudlin future.

  I looked out the tinted plane window at the cloud kingdoms that rose and fell around us. They didn’t care about any of our bullshit but simply traveled the skies, shrinking and growing, raining and snowing, far above the stupidity below. It was a miracle we got to be up among them, though what we mostly do when we are is complain about the lack of knee room and the terrible snacks. I suppose that’s pretty typical of humanity—find something amazing and cut it down to size.

  My mind wandered, thinking about home, thinking about Paris, thinking about the dreamy days on the boat when I could sometimes forget there was this huge cloud over all us and indulge in lazy, sultry sex instead. I’d lost most of the inhibitions about my body I’d ever had during this strange time. It was hard to argue with two lovers who seemed to think I was quite desirable.

  It was more than that, though. Somewhere in the middle of all of this turmoil and weirdness I had started to like certain things about myself I’d never had to think about before. I’d handled Stoller pretty well, including being cut up. I hadn’t freaked out when things had gotten difficult or absurd. I hadn’t made excuses for myself or tried to blame anyone else for my actions or choices.

  I still regretted running, only because Solosha had been hurt and ultimately it had been a stupid move. But it also wasn’t my fault Stoller was a psycho and at this point it was clear something would have happened eventually anyway. At least now we knew who was involved. Not the best way to discover a conspiracy, but better than not knowing.

  It still seemed strange to me, Alexis and Stoller, the entire House Dracul reveal. Realizing that beautiful undead humans, while prettier and longer-lived, weren’t necessarily any wiser. We generally assumed they were in our fiction. I guess we wanted to believe that they would have it all figured out, what with eternity and everything. But when I thought about it, forever was a long damn time. You had to fill it with something. It made a bizarre kind of sense that some would pick soap-operatic drama and politics. They’d certainly pass the time.

  Me, I’d rather catch up on my reading. Learn a new language. Take a film class or learn a trade. Welding seemed like a better option than shit-stirring, personally.

  The plane continued to hurtle through space as I ruminated, thinking about everything but the possible fight to come. I had a hard time picturing myself battling anyone physically. Some sharply worded barbs, maybe, but I didn’t even know how to make a proper fist. It made me wish I’d taken that fencing class I’d wanted to back when I was a teen, but my dad had said it was unladylike. Probably wouldn’t have helped, but I’d’ve felt better.

  I stretched out in my seat and continued to watch Robert and Dimitri as they pored over maps and gestured at one another, sometimes with frustration, other times in agreement.

  I went to sleep with the sil
houettes of their faces, bent toward one another, etched into my mind.

  ***

  Heathrow was as you’d expect: big and crowded. London was gray and rainy, but in a way it felt closer to home than I’d been in weeks. Given how much my life had shifted, I found the sights and sounds of the city comforting.

  I’d always wondered why the London Underground was called “the Tube” until I actually saw it. Maybe it’s not why it’s called that, but it’s all literally tubes with trains going back and forth, hurtling into a kind of grounded space. Huge hollow cylinders underneath the city, rattling and thrumming. Considering how vast it is, it works remarkably well. You do feel a bit like a rat in a maze, though.

  We took public transport for a few reasons. One, it was easier to lose anyone following us. Two, it was faster than trying to drive in London. And three, Robert insisted. I didn’t mind, letting him and Dimitri guide us.

  We stayed for a night in Trafalgar Square and I couldn’t help but smile when we popped out heads out to see the gold statues in front of the National Portrait Gallery. I hadn’t gotten to see it when I’d been in London last, so I allowed myself a little touristy indulgence.

  When you turn away from the gallery you can see Big Ben in the distance and, if you actually walk that way, the Houses of Parliament and Westminster Abbey. The entire city was brimming with history older than the country and any city where I came from. I wished I had to time to explore it and compare fish ’n’ chips from every dive and high-end joint I could find.

  But there were more important things than fried fish, potatoes, and mushy peas to deal with. I still took a deep breath and swore I could smell chips in the air.

  Our hotel was right off the main square and we were escorted to a very special suite with a knowing nod from the manager. I didn’t ask what he was.